Matisyahu's Shattered

For two years, fans have anxiously awaited Matisyahu’s return. After his Grammy nomination in 2006 for his first nationally distributed album, Youth, people were hungry for more. It was a world entrenched in musical sin and Matisyahu was the answer to our prayers. Who could forget the disappointment of Outkast’s highly anticipated Idlewild? But listening to Matisyahu, swaying to the beats of this reggae-loving, rap-spitting Hassidic Jew, we knew salvation was near. Yes, we could even see the light (you knew it was coming).

So it’s hard to believe that, after such success with a distinct sound and devoted fan base, Matisyahu would stray from all that with the release of Shattered, a four-song EP. It’s meant to be a taste of what’s to come in his full-length album, due out in 2009, and it’s clear that Matisyahu wants us to know he’s coming back a changed man.

He opens the album with “Smash Lies,” a song with an inescapable electronic thud that, sadly, reminds me of a track off of N’Sync’s No String Attached. As the song progresses, it takes on a true hip-hop vibe, but because of the reggae beat, it feels more like Sean Paul than Matisyahu. Perhaps the most unsettling aspect is that I could actually see myself dancing to this song, and I’ve never been able to do that with Matisyahu.



In “So High So Low,” he achieves a more alternative sound. His voice changes so much that you could actually swear you were listening to Citizen Cope. It seems Matisyahu has gone back to his roots here, reminding listeners that most of his inspiration in the early stages of his career was drawn from the sounds of Phish.

Shattered’s third track is the most experimental on the EP. The electronic sound is back in a subtle way, and Matisyahu and another voice rap in Hebrew while a sitar plays throughout. Though it has a strong Middle Eastern undercurrent, “Two Child One Drop” also marks an unmistakable return to Matisyahu’s twist on a classic Marley.

The last track on the album gave me that Ben-Harper-concert sensation. It’s slower than the rest, and Matisyahu’s drops down to a whisper. The constant repetition of “Oh yo yo yo oh oh” reintroduces the religious nature found in most of his earlier music, but only heard on this track of the EP.

Matisyahu is certainly reaching out to a more varied audience with this EP, but will his original fan base be pleased? Some may say he’s wandering into overwhelmingly mainstream territory. It feels like every song is reminiscent of another artist’s sound. Others will still be able to recognize traces of the Jamaican beats that have marked his music from the start. The EP doesn’t have a unified sound, but rather exhibits Matisyahu’s on-going search for something he can wholly call his own. Hopefully the answer to his soul searching will come on the full length album, but until then, I’m sticking to the old stuff. -Tamara Weston
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